


All Tied Up

by JaqofSpades



Series: Of ribbons and rope [2]
Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: F/M, The Good Ship Charloe, Topsy Turvy Fic Challenge, and a whip, and even a knife it seems, gratuitous cliffhanger warning, light bondage themes, things one can do with a ribbon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-03
Updated: 2015-04-11
Packaged: 2018-03-21 00:45:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3671226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaqofSpades/pseuds/JaqofSpades
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s not that she doesn’t like the ring.  She loves the ring.  But she’s had it up to here with his high-handed bullshit, and if he wants to marry her, he can damn well ask.</p><p>(Or, what came after <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/2615738/chapters/5831087">Undone</a>.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LemonSupreme](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LemonSupreme/gifts).



> Written for TheGoodShipCharloe’s Topsy Turvy Challenge, and in particular, for LemonSupreme’s very long-lived birthday :D Happy post-birthday, Lemon Supreme, and thanks so much for all the wonderful fic!
> 
> (And I do realise this is a short fic challenge. But I was having too much fun with the twistiness to leave this as short fic.

The pink diamond sits on her windowsill, crystalline facets aglow with the orange blush of the Willoughby dawn. It’s gaudy and ostentatious, Charlie tries to tell herself, even as the beauty of it makes her catch her breath. Too big to actually wear, she lectures herself, but can’t keep back her delighted shudder as she reaches for it, admiring the glorious riot of color against her tan skin for a moment before reverently sliding it further onto her finger. 

Monroe’s ring. The bastard.

She wants to be his, she has no doubts about that. But she’s had it up to here with his high-handed bullshit, and if he wants to marry her, he can damn well ask. The traditional way. Down on one knee, Charlie fumes.

The mental image leaves her giggling as she empties her cupboards of anything perishable, then scribbles a quick note for Miles and her mother. She can be in Austin by mid-afternoon if she travels light and fast, changing horses halfway. Plenty of time to figure out what the hell she’s going to do when she gets there.

After the shit he’s pulled? Monroe’s going to have to go down on both knees, and beg her to marry him.

If he’s very convincing, she might even let him make it up to her, Charlie smirks. Or maybe … oh yes, she thinks. That’s it. Charlie’s grin is as wide as Texas and as wicked as Monroe himself by the time she leaves Willoughby in her dust, her thoughts racing ahead to the man she expects is alone in his office right now, no doubt frowning over his half glasses at the ledgers he hates. Or maybe he was staring into space, remembering how she’d looked, trussed up in pink ribbon, spread-eagled for his pleasure.

Charlie glances down to find her fingers playing with the small bag she has tied to her saddle horn. She has an apple and some freshly dug peanuts for her lunch, with a hunk of cheese for whenever. There’s a length of rope in there, and the small riding whip someone had given her at some point. A little pistol, too dainty to leave behind, and a clean t-shirt.

And wrapped in the t-shirt is a pink diamond ring in a little black box, all tied up in a long, pale pink ribbon. The smirk creeps back onto her face as she plots her every move - she may not have his years of experience, but she has enthusiasm and her surprisingly helpful uncle on her side.

Time to turn the tables.

*  
“The stables are that way, Miss.”

The rail-thin woman takes one look at Charlie’s dust-covered clothes and tries to redirect her back down the hall. 

“I know where the stables are, thanks. I left my horse there,” Charlie snaps, refusing to be intimidated. So what if the snooty brunette looked like a woman in a magazine from before the Blackout – Charlie had legitimate business here!

Vaguely legitimate, anyway. She was pretty sure Monroe wouldn’t object – might even give her a medal. Gold-plated handcuffs, perhaps.

Charlie tries to rein in her smirk and look business-like. “I’m looking for General Monroe.”

“Secretary Monroe is a very busy man. You’ll have to make an appointment with his assistant, and come back another day. Preferably in clean clothes.”

“Oh, okay then. I’ll just dump my stuff at Bass’ house, get him to haul me up a bath, then let him keep me awake most of the night before I come back tomorrow. Think the Secretary will see me then?”

The woman’s bumpy progress from hauteur to outraged understanding to pinched courtesy left Charlie struggling not to laugh outright. Suck that, diplomacy, she thought as she smiled beatifically at the woman, then followed her up the large central stairs.

She could have easily found Bass’ office itself – she’d been there before - but her plan required that they not be interrupted. And his secretary could help with that. Really, it would have been easier if he’d just let everyone think she was his mistress. Who’d be taken aback by a dusty booty call then?

Charlie ignores the woman stalking alongside her to ponder if mistresses were even allowed to get dirty – maybe she’d disqualified herself right from the start – then focuses her energy on remembering the name of the fearsome gatekeeper who controlled Bass’ office and diary.

Hope, she remembered as Madam Bitchface steered her towards the waiting room that led into to Bass’ office. They’d spent some time together last year when she’d been helping Bass move into his new place, grateful to find the motherly woman had summarily dismissed all the gossip that swirled around her boss and his much younger friend. “Hey, Hope.”

“Charlie! How wonderful to see you. Are you in town for long?” Her non-answer was smothered by the other woman’s hug, which was just as well, given she had no idea what to say. 

“Depends on Bass,” she shrugged eventually. “He in?”

Hope reared back to look her straight in the eye as if to divine her intentions. Charlie’s heart raced in panic – please don’t let her be a mindreader, please – before she was able to force an innocent smile onto her face. 

Hope snorted. “He had three more meetings this afternoon. But if I let you go in there now he’s just going to tell me to cancel them, isn’t he.”

“Probably.”

“Just as well the General’s first priority was re-establishing a messenger service, wasn’t it?” Hope says acidly, already reaching for the pile of carefully hoarded paper on her desk.

Charlie just smiled and juggled her armful once more as she started towards Bass’ office. Her hand was on the doorknob when the older woman said her name with enough gravity to make her look back.

“Charlie. Do you know what you’re doing?”

Her smile was more tremulous than she would have liked, but it was as honest as the words that followed. “Nope. But apparently I’m all grown up now, so I figure that means I get to decide for myself.”

Charlie is pretty damn sure her heart has already made the decision for her, but she is too stubborn to sign it off until her brain and her body get the chance to vote too. Maybe even Monroe will get a say.

Or not, Charlie thinks unrepentantly, then pushes the door open.

*

He’s not wearing his glasses, dammit. It’s kind of weird how much she loves seeing him peer over the top, looking every inch of his 50 years, but what Rachel calls his ‘nerdy professor’ look has always done strange things to her loins. Maybe she’ll start there, Charlie thinks.

“Charlotte!” He glances at her finger to see if she’s wearing his ring, and looks disappointed to find she hasn’t chosen to parade herself as a taken woman just yet. Her temper spikes from somewhat aggravated to beyond pissed off.

“Missing something, Bass? Were you expecting a frilly apron and a fuck-me smile?” she attacks, rifling around in the bag that’s now slung over her shoulder to find the ringbox, yanking it free of the ribbon before tossing it at him.

“Some guy who thought he could take me for granted left this at my house. You might want to return it to its rightful owner,” she sneers, then turns on her heel, suddenly uncaring of the delicious plans she had dreamed up over the long, boring miles between Austin and Willoughby. 

She nearly makes the door before he recovers from his shock and bolts after her, pulling her fingers away from the knob with a clucking noise. Charlie eyeballs the large hand covering her own, then lifts deadly cold eyes to meet his. She doesn’t remember pulling her knife, but hell. Call it punctuation. 

“Back the fuck off.”

Bass freezes, then takes a step back, hands in the air. His eyes aren’t twinkling anymore, nor is he wearing that smug smile. Instead, he watches her with the sort of wariness she hasn’t seen on him since before the Patriot War, before Willoughby even.

He’s Monroe again. The man who remembers that once, she was the only person who came close to being able to kill him. The man who knows how much blood is on her hands, and how it had soaked the earth underneath them as they fought back to back, snarling like the feral beasts they inevitably became. 

And like always, she wants to do bad, bad things to Sebastian Monroe.

“Go sit at your desk,” she barks, and he hesitates for a moment, staring her down, before he moves to obey. The practical voice inside Charlie’s head points out that yes, she is scary, but he could take her in a minute. It makes no sense that he should do exactly as he’s told, lowering himself into the tall leather chair, then slowly returning his hands to shoulder height as he keeps his gaze locked on hers. She knows him better than to assume this is anything other than a tactical, well-considered surrender, but she’ll take it.

She’ll take it, and run with it, and play with it, and maybe, when they’re done, he’ll understand what the true meaning of surrender is. (Her gift to him, this time.) 

Charlie moves around behind the chair and grabs at his hands, pulling them roughly together behind the high back of the chair, then dragging the length of rope out to secure them. It’s not half as pretty as the knots he’d woven with her ribbon, nor as gentle on the skin, but she’s pretty sure he’s had worse. Besides. She has other plans for the ribbon.

He struggles a little once he realizes what she’s doing, twisting around to try and look into her face, then realizing how fruitless that is. 

“Uh, Charlie. What’s this about? You need to talk to me. And put away the knife.”

She snorts, and hopes she doesn’t sound as bitter as she feels.

“Like you talked to me? Or maybe I could just write you a note, Bass!”

She plonks her sack down and slides onto the desk in front of him, booted feet resting on the edge of his seat between his knees as she fondles the knife between long fingers. He still looks wary, but also manages to pout like a scolded child. Charlie rolls her eyes, than slams the blade deep into the wood of his desk, smiling internally when she succeeds in making him jump.

“This isn’t about revenge, Bass, or you making me mad.” She’d spend all of her time thinking up ways to get back at him if that was all it was. “You forgot who you were dealing with there for a while. Call this a reminder.”

Subtlety, she decides, is for the birds. She nudges his knees further apart with her boots, and then slides one pointy, steel-capped toe up the inside of his thigh to nudge at the growing hardness between his thighs. 

“So tell me, General Monroe. What’s your safe word?”

The astonished delight on his face brings a smile to her lips for the first time since she’d walked into his office. He grins back, his entire body relaxing into the chair as he considers her question.

“Certainly not ‘walnut’. Maybe ‘canteloupe’? Nah. I’ve got it.” He throws his hips forward so that his cock slams into her boot, making them both groan. “Xena.”

She raises a brow in question but he just shakes his head. “You’ll figure it out one day. But right now, I’m tied up, at your mercy. Now what will you do with me,” he teases with a tilt of his head that is simultaneously the smug politician she sometimes hates, and the asshole freedom fighter she’d fallen in love with.

But like he said, she’s the one in control. She can make them both pay.

Charlie smiles and reaches into her bag once more. The neat little whip swishes as she flicks it over his knee, then trails it down the side of his face. He stiffens for a moment, then lets out a long breath through his nose.

“If it’s too much, I don’t have to use this. I haven’t forgotten what they did to you in Mexico.”

His eyes shoot towards the whip then back to her face. “You gonna kiss it better?” 

“Maybe.”

“Well, if I might get a kiss out of it, by all means.” His eyes cloud to a darker blue than she’s ever seen. “Go ahead and fuck me up.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm hoping people will forgive me for getting caught up in this world once more - this chapter was getting long and demanded there be one more chapter yet to come. I did TRY to be less cliffhangery this time.

Charlie is no stranger to what this man does to her. It’s not even the first time she’s had him at her mercy, but hearing him say it, watching him cede control: the mix of lust and power hits her with the down-low burn of old whiskey. 

She licks her lips, suddenly overtaken by the urge to see if surrender tastes as sweet as she thinks it might. To swipe her tongue over the muscle that jumps in his neck, to see if he sweats defiance, or fury. To bite down and see if he bleeds conceit.

Or maybe it will be something else. Darkier, headier, the earthy undertone that enfolds her like a warm blanket, that swirl of oak that makes her gasp in appreciation. The secret needs he’ll never quite admit. To trust. To let go.

To be undone.

She’d spent a day thinking about it before she’d gone to Miles to explore her hunch. She’d invested in a quart of the best rotgut in town, and bailed him up in the late afternoon, when her mom was still working with Gene in the surgery. 

“Bass and I,” she’d started, and never really had to finish the sentence. Miles didn’t even bother to fake surprise, not even when she turned the conversation to their little adventure with Blanchard in Austin. It wasn’t Bass’ first time on the end of a whip, Miles confirmed.

“Either end,” he’d snorted, then seemed to remember who he was talking to. “It’s a thing, kid. An outlet. Not that uncommon for …” he’d flushed, then cursed silently. Charlie bit her lip and refused to let her mind contemplate just how much her uncle and his best friend might have in common. That way lay thoughts of her mother, and madness.

For Miles too, apparently.

“Look. You and Bass. Your mother thinks it’s gonna be a disaster area, but it’s not like we didn’t see it coming. Thought maybe you’d jump each other and get it out of your systems, but nope, you decided to be friends and fall in love instead. But you gotta understand … it’s never gonna be simple. Not with him.”

Miles stared out over the fields beyond Gene’s back porch, his face shaded with regret. Some mean little part of her was glad he realized how much of Monroe’s damage was down to him; it was stubborn part of her who loved him unconditionally that chose to rest her head on his shoulder in silent support. 

“He’s lived too much. Hell – so have you. But Bass – that’s a lotta years of not-so-clean living. Lotta shit to get off his chest.” Miles ground to a halt, obviously struggling. Charlie simply gazed at him and waited for his impatience to win out. For once, the manoeuvre seemed to fail, her uncle pushing himself to his feet as if abandoning their little chat, but then he paused on the top step, rushing the words out in a paroxysm of mortification.

“Little bit of pain. Make him wait for it. Try a cock ring.”

Then he had fled inside, and it had taken another night of supposedly drunken conversations in the bar to figure out exactly what a cock ring was, and what it did.

Quite the education, Charlie smirks, her eyes dropping to her lover’s straining cock. She knows he doesn’t need any help staying hard, so orgasm denial it is. And thanks to Tally Brown’s breathless explanations, she now knows she doesn’t need a cock ring for that.

She has the perfect substitute.

But first …

“Fuck you up? Oh, honey.”

Maybe he’s fucked a thousand girls to her modest clutch of lovers, maybe he’d tried every sexual thrill under the sun. But she was Charlie Matheson, who’d led the deadliest platoon of fighters in the Texan Army. Who’d drawn on Duncan Page because she hadn’t liked the shape of her smirk. Who’d stared down a dictator, and dared him to shoot her. 

She can drip scorn with the best of them.

“Why would I want to do that? Something tells me you’d enjoy it a bit too much. No. This is just … encouragement,” she purrs, pretending to examine the whip.

His expression actually drops a little, the poor, transparent man. Charlie smiles sweetly, then snaps her wrist so the lash flicks across the fullness of his clothed cock, making him yelp. “It might be fun, sure, but you’re no good to me fucked up. Just do as you’re told, and I won’t need to punish you. Or withhold your reward.”

He doesn’t smile. Something tells her he’s too turned on for that, his eyes locked on her as if she holds all the secrets of the universe. “Yes, mistress,” he rasps, and she has to push her legs together to quell her increasingly desperate arousal.

It doesn’t work, so she slides off the desk and into his lap.

“You’re learning already. I like that. Now. Lesson one. Communication.”

He winces as her jeans-covered crotch presses down onto his increasingly strangled erection. She grinds down just to show him she noticed, then does it again because it felt so fucking good.

“How does that feel, Bass? What does it make you want to do?”

“Hurts. Wanna fuck you.”

“What, you can’t even manage full sentences? And how, exactly, are you going to fuck me with your pants on?”

He frowned, as if she was refusing to play his game. 

“You’re going to take them off for me?”

Charlie smiles so sweetly she is sure her teeth will fall out from the rot. She rocks forward and drags her tongue over the glorious landscape of his neck, tugging on his earlobe with her teeth before she speaks again. “You see, a girl likes to be asked. In person. Properly.” 

Chagrin flashes across his features as the lesson bites deep, neither of them in any doubt about what she means. Then his tightlipped smile returns – not the seemingly open smile he uses to seduce the weak-willed, or the mad grin that comes out when he is unable to restrain his delight, but the mean one, the I’ve-got-a-secret twitch of the lips that marks him as the cunning, homicidal warlord she thinks of as Monroe.

It’s fucking predatory and her core throbs in welcome. Angry, Charlie reminds herself. You are _angry_.

“Please take my pants off, mistress. Please rescue my cock before it starts to cry. Please marry me.” 

Her hand is on the hilt of her knife, yanking it from the wood of his desk and laying it alongside the vulnerable stretch of his neck. She could kill him so easily like this, the thought floats through. His jugular is right there. Instead, she pushes just hard enough to watch the line of blood well up wherever the blade kisses. A little harder than she has to, maybe, for mere threat, but neither of them are very good at making threats. And he’s so pretty painted in blood.

“Why would I want to marry someone who doesn’t think enough of me to ask me in person? Who obviously thinks I’m his for the fucking taking just because he can figure out the things I need in bed? I might have mellowed, grown up a bit, but I’m still Charlie Matheson, Bass. Be thankful I don’t cut your fucking throat for the insult.”

She can feel his cock jump underneath her and knows the moan that leaves his lips is nothing to do with fear or pain. She’s not hurting him nearly enough to satisfy him, a knowing little voice whispers. Good, she tells it. They’ve got a long way to go before they get anywhere near that.

“Yes, mistress.”

She raises an eyebrow in question, confused as to what he’s saying yes to.

“Thank you for not cutting my throat. Thank you for giving me a chance to do it properly. Thank you for being Charlie Matheson.”

“Fuck you, Monroe. That deserves a reward and I didn’t want to give you one yet,” she snarls, and slithers backwards off his lap. Her fingers are quick on his belt, and he bucks his hips upwards in supplication, allowing her to yank down trousers and underwear in one hard tug.

He’s glorious, sitting there half naked. Her mouth waters at the sight of his heavily veined cock, already angry red and so hard that it slaps against his belly. She doesn’t mean to lick her lips, but he moans as if she’s done it on purpose, so she lets her eyes wander all over him, knowing the heat of her gaze is only making him harder.

Thank you God, for giving me this man, she can’t help but think. Her Dad had done his best to raise her with some knowledge of religion, but she’d never really felt it before now. But this pull, the way all their jagged pieces meshed – _his cock_ – she had to admit it was the best evidence for a divine plan she’d ever seen.

God should probably look away now, though. 

Charlie tears herself from the view and turns her back on him to fish in her bag of supplies. She doesn’t know how to do the pretty, ornate knots he’d decorated her with, only how to tie a prisoner, or her shoes. But it’s not going to stop her.

His gaze locks on the pink ribbon, then he looks up in slow, simmering realization. It’s enough to pull him out of their little scene, his fake obedience vanishing into thin air.

“Fuck. Baby. Oh God. Charlie,” he curses, struggling against his bonds for the first time. “Please. I want to … “

“Ah. But it’s not about what you want, is it Bass? It’s about what I want to do to you, and whether or not you trust me enough to let me do it.”

She drapes the ribbon over his cock and loops it around, drawing it tight with a teasing smile. “Xena? Do you want to stop?”

“No! Fuck no. Don’t you dare stop!” he growls, then remembers he’s supposed to be submitting.

“Please, mistress. Whatever you want to do.” 

Charlie hides her smile and makes the order sharp in her mouth. “Lift up.”

He lifts his hips free of the chair, heedless of the way it makes his arms shake and his shoulder muscles bunch underneath his shirt. Charlie reminds herself to deal with that after, but returns her focus to the task at hand. The ribbon needs to be tight around the base of his cock and the top of his balls, Tally had explained. The rest is just for effect.

He shudders as she passes the first loop around his testicles, crossing the ribbon underneath his cock before she brings it around to tie her first knot at the top. How will that feel, she wonders, when she fucks him? It takes her a moment or two before she knows to dismiss the question. This isn’t about her pleasure. She needs to focus on him: he’d taught her that when he’d brought her undone.

Her motivation might be different to his, but she owes it to him to show him the error of her ways with total commitment and focus. If she can take what she needs along the way, so be it, Charlie tells herself as she catches his eye and adds several more loose loops for pure effect, then ties him off with a showy bow.

“There,” she says, standing back to admire her handiwork. She waits for him to look at her, all blazing desire and hungry speculation, before she makes her next move.

She takes her jacket off slowly, then hooks her fingers under the sleeveless shirt beneath, discarding it on the floor next to her. She had considered fancy underwear, but then discarded the idea. He didn’t want a fancy doll, he’d told her. If it was Charlie he really wanted, Charlie he would get.

She stretches a little, gliding her thumbs over already-peaked nipples in a caress that looks almost incidental. When he groans, she hides her smile and unbuckles her belt, then seemingly changes her mind, letting her jeans gape open while she kicks her way free of her boots.

His eyes are riveted on her bare mound, her wiry curls already dark with moisture, the scent of her rising thick and musky into the space between them. There’s no denying it now, this power trip. She wouldn’t even bother.

Charlie steps closer, her shins brushing his, their knees kissing. Close enough to touch, if his hands hadn’t been bound behind his back. It had been torture, she remembers, not being able to touch him. Blissful, welcome torture.

“Did it get you this hot, Bass? Controlling me? I understand now, why you needed to come. Why you couldn’t wait. It’s killing me, seeing you like this. I might have to do something about it.” She pouts, and tells herself she’s just playing. It’s just a tease. But her body isn’t listening, every nerve ending on alert as she slides her hand down and explores the wetness streaming from her insistent sex. Her legs insisting on moving apart to let her drive two fingers into herself, and ease the throb of want, just for a moment.

His cock starts to purple in cage of pink ribbon, and she can see him fighting for control, muscles bunching in his shoulders as he pulls at his bonds, jaw clenched with restraint.

She feels merciless as she brings her glistening fingers to her mouth, ignoring the outright plea in his eyes. “Mmmm. Tastes good, Bass. Maybe you can have a taste if you do well with lesson two. But for now …”

She wiggles the loosened jeans down over her hips, letting gravity tug them to the ground, then stepping out of them without ever once dropping his gaze.

“Breathe, Bass,” she mocks, trying not to laugh at just how mesmerized he is by her naked form. Which reminds her.

“That has to go,” she says, nodding at the shirt that is currently hiding some of her favorite parts of his body. “I could just cut it off you, but then, what would you wear out of here? Don’t suppose you keep a change of clothes in the office?”

“From now on, I do,” he groans, and she tries the squelch the little thrill she gets at the suggestion that, for her, he will change his life. It’s a ridiculously tiny thing, she tells herself, for a man who has had more lives than a cat, each of them crazier than the last. But maybe that’s what it is about Monroe, the thing that had claimed her heart and kept it beating for him through all her years of waiting. 

He’ll happily put another person at the centre of his universe. He does it over and over – Miles, Shelly, Miles, Connor, and then, reluctantly, secretly, guardedly – it had been her. Neither of them could admit it – “you came back,” she had said, and she could see the turmoil in his eyes, the fight raging inside him, but she’d known. They’d never confronted it, never tested it, until the night she’d found him in the barn, spilling into the hay as he cried her name. She’d thought their time had come, but all he had allowed was one wild kiss, before he’d torn himself away and made liars of them both. “You don’t really want me, Charlotte, and I don’t get to have you.” 

Lesson two, she thinks. No more lies.

Charlie closes the distance between them, kneeling up on the chair between his spread knees, her hands sliding all over him while ostensibly focused on the buttons of his shirt. She can feel the moment his gaze drops away from her face to lock on the darkened tips of her breasts, hard, pink temptation swaying just inches from his open mouth. But he doesn’t have an inch of give in his shoulders, not anymore. 

His huff of frustration earns him a kiss on his sternum in almost-apology, but Charlie refuses to be distracted from her mission. She flicks the last button from its hole then straightens up to push both sides of his shirt wide. She can’t get him out of the sleeves without untying him, and – no. Not going to happen, she tells herself sternly. She’ll just have to make do with the chiseled magnificence of his torso, Charlie sighs appreciatively. All in the name of making her point, of course.

He throws his head back, slamming it against back of the chair as her hands reacquaint themselves with the wonder of hard muscle under hot skin. Moans as she kisses the sinuous ridge that arches up into his neck, and palms the taut roundness of his pecs. His abdominals clench when she scratches his flat nipples with her fingernails, and Charlie needs to map that reaction more than she needs air. She slides backwards and drifts her lips down over the ripples of muscle - one, two, three, four ridges of pure virility - then finds the delicious cavern between them and traces it south with her tongue. It ends in a luxuriant mass of hair redolent with his thick male musk; she noses her way towards his giftwrapped penis and tests her knots, pushing and pulling and flicking and teasing, watching him swell with every swipe of her tongue.

He’s pitching his hips up into her hands, letting her reach around to squeeze at his balls, hurtling him even faster towards an edge the knots simply won’t let him fly over. She slides off the chair completely, crouching between his restless feet, forearms on his thighs and hands drifting up and down, up and down, up and down as she laves his cock with her tongue, then settles in to suck.

“Charlie. Char, Jesus Char …” Bass starts to keen, and when she glances up, she finds his eyes are tightly shut, his entire body bowed as if she’s put him on the rack. She has, of course. She’ll have mercy, but he’ll suffer first.

She drags her teeth over him then backs away. 

His eyes flutter open in confusion, cock jerking in a vain attempt to come. “Pl –“

Her chin comes up in challenge, and he bangs his teeth together in his rush to comply with her obvious wish for silence.

“Don’t ever take me for granted again, Bass. Don’t ever lie to me, or think you can make my decisions for me, or just take off without a word and expect me to stay put. You talk to me. You tell me what you want, and I’ll tell you what I need.”

She tries to keep the emotion out of her voice, but the resentment she feels at the way he has treated her can’t help but creeps in. She should be used to it, being ignored and cast aside, Miles, her Mom, even Grandpa had done it too, but Bass, Bass … he’s the only one she can’t take it from. Won’t take it from, because it’s different with him. He sees her. Puts her first. Chooses her.

Now he just has to learn to let her choose him back.


	3. Chapter 3

“You, Charlie. All I need is you,” he gasps, and it would be easy to dismiss it as that say-anything, do-anything state that lurks either side of a good orgasm.

But his eyes are glistening, that wet sheen of miraculous blue that she now knows is nothing less than proof of his veracity. This man, who’d become a legend of bloodlust and brutality, wears his heart on his sleeve. And it’s a battered, charred thing, and probably not completely whole, but she’s always known it was hers to claim. Since long before a ribbon, or a ring.

Take away the sexual heat that had always been there, ignore the bonds that inevitably form between soldiers, and she can still point to a chain of moments hung with torturous possibility. Most, she’d fled from. Others she’d squirrelled away for her private pleasure, the warm emotional rush every bit as pornographic as knowing he wanted to fuck her. Some, they’d had to face head on.

She’d tracked him, that night he left. Waited until Neville and Connor had disappeared off to some meeting, then confronted him at his own campfire. He’d grabbed her arm to make a point, but the argument had died away when he felt the rippled flesh under his fingertips. He’d turned it over, eyes sad as he traced the mark with a gentleness that stole her ability to protest.

Then he had blown her world apart. 

“The brand – it was my pledge to Miles. That we’d do it together. Build something for both of us. M for Matheson, M for Monroe. I would have never thought …” he turned away, bitterness souring the air around them, and his eyes were wet by the time he looked back. “One too many times, Charlie. I can’t do this again.”

Couldn’t put his trust in Miles only to see it thrown back in his face. Couldn’t charge blindly in, never knowing if her fickle uncle would have his back, Charlie knew. And wished she didn’t know exactly how it felt.

Monroe’s fingers had traced the ridges of her brand with a delicacy that made her ache before making their way to her face to slide over the sharpness of her cheekbone and the softness of her cheek. Her pulse was galloping by the time he tilted her face up to his, blue flame roasted her alive as he delivered the final, shocking indictment. “Guess I picked the wrong fucking Matheson.”

She hadn’t been able to breathe in that moment, every part of her terrified by what he’d been trying to say. Even now, standing before him, she bleeds for Miles even as her possessive heart shrieks its triumph. But Bass was right. If it had been her and him, history could have been very different. It still could, if only he’d let it. 

If he’d trust her with it.

Charlie turns back to the table and picks up the riding whip, trailing it over his foot, then up his leg and torso as she prowls around the chair, a complete circle with the lash never leaving his body once. It trails over him, as sweet as any caress except for its potential to bite at any moment. But instead it kisses his neck, his shoulder, then swishes down his arm to hover over his cock. His eyes shoot up to hers in a mute plea, and Charlie doesn’t even bother to hide her grin as she draws out the suspense.

When his chest is rising and falling like a stud bull, she lets it fall, blowing him a kiss as she settles the whip into a gentle, teasing slide up and down his cock. It’s as maddening as her mouth had been before it, pure sensation that tickles him into an agonised state of not-quite-enough. When he starts to buck up into it, a flick of her wrist slashes the whip across his hipbone, hard enough to make him yell with surprise.

“Lesson two is trust, Bass. You have to trust me to know when you need more, and to give it to you.”

He grunts his assent as hot eyes bore into her own. He’s wary, she can tell, but the sexual excitement is making him rash. If there’s one thing Charlie knows about Bass Monroe, it’s that trust is his Achilles heel. He pants after it like a bitch in heat, absolutely reveres it, but it has left him covered in scars. 

She’s not going to let him pretend this is just a sex game.

“I’m going to ask you some questions, and if you answer honestly, you’ll be rewarded.”

“Yes, mistress,” he replies. He won’t be smirking for long, she’s fairly sure of that.

“Did you really think I didn’t want you?”

His flinch is almost imperceptible, and the way his gaze dances away told Charlie everything she needs to know. But this is about trust, so she waits for his clarification. 

“Not really. But – you shouldn’t have wanted me. After everything.”

“So you decided for me.” 

He nods slowly as realization sets in. He’s being asked to trust her with the truth.

“Yes, mistress,” he admits quietly, regret thick in his voice.

Charlie steps forward to run her free hand over his bound cock, feeling it pulse and grow in her hand. “Thank you,” she murmurs, offering him a slow, gentle pump that leaves him writhing with delight. The second his eyes close, the whip whistles through the air, leaving two brand new stripes on his thighs.

His eyes shoot open to a glare that two parts shock to one part fury, his moment of docility obviously banished. Charlie grins back, all teeth and savage joy, then glances pointedly at his now rampant cock.

“So which makes you harder, the pleasure, or the pain?”

His look is incredulous, until the moment the grin breaks out over his face. “Both. The two together, I think,” he confesses.

Charlie leans in close and kisses him hard. “I know,” she whispers in his ear, then returns to her position, legs apart, whip in hand, gaze hard.

“Do you think you deserve me?”

“No.”

The whip falls.

He lifts his chin and spits it out again.

“No.”

She accepts it as his truth with ill grace, spending a little too much time on his pleasure and not enough on balancing it with pain. He’s begging to be allowed to come when she’s done, but merely begging. Not losing his mind the way she knows he needs to.

“Is that up to you to decide?”

He hangs his head mulishly before offering her a single shake.

“Sorry?”

His eyes are blazing when he lifts them to meet her steady gaze.

“No, it’s not up to me. It’s your decision.”

“Do you get to have me?”

He nods mutely, as if unable to believe it. When she doesn’t move, he offers up the words as if they’re being dragged from the darkest corners of his soul. 

“For as long as you want me.”

Her knees threaten to buckle at the resignation in his voice. Friend or lover or wife, he’s accepted it as an inevitability that she will leave him. Sometimes she forgets this, the way they are two halves of the one soul. She still tells herself she doesn’t need new friends, doesn’t need a man in her life, doesn’t need to live too close to Miles and Rachel, and sometimes she’s convincing enough that she forgets the agony of crying over her Dad’s body, and Maggie’s, and Danny’s, and Nora’s. _Everybody leaves me._

He came back, she reminds herself, and clings to it, that stubborn ember that just won’t go out. But this time, it needs tending. She has teased and seduced and pushed and taunted him to the very edge, emotionally as well as physically. He needs tending.

She abandons the whip and scrambles into his lap, fingers tangling in the curls at the back of his head as she presses into him, their foreheads kissing, mouths sharing breath, hearts slamming the same stubborn tattoo. There’s no point dissembling anymore, or pretending she needs to think about it. They are as inevitable as the fall of his Republic, or the defeat of the Patriots. All the things she wants to say mill about inside her head, but in the moment, pure emotion woven from so so many hopes and dreams, the words stick in her throat.

Then he sighs, content, and the lump in her throat dissolves.

“If we do this, you get me for always, Monroe. I’m not Miles. I won’t leave you.” His heartbeat ratchets up at the mention of Miles, but then settles back into its rich, steady thud when she offers her promise. That’s not all it is, though. Charlie needs him to hear the warning, too.

“I will never leave you - not if I can help it. Maybe not even if you want me to,” she says gravely. “So be sure.” 

“Charlie, I –“ 

She interrupts him with a kiss as light as air. “Bass, I need to get this out. Let me finish?”

His mouth opens and she’s suddenly terrified he’s going to say ‘yes, mistress’. This isn’t part of the game, she wants to cry. There are no rules here. 

But she’s forgetting this is Bass, who knows her inside out. “Go on, little cat. Please.”

She smiles gratefully, and lays out the terms of their treaty.

“Choose me, and you can forget all about pretty little dolls up on the shelf. Or all these shiny office girls who’ll do any damn thing you want. Instead, you get scary Charlie Matheson with her knives and her bow and her foul moods and no fucking idea of how to be someone’s wife,” she warns. 

“Sure, I can pretend to be normal, maybe even clean up and make nice just like them some days, but the minute someone comes up too quick behind me, or touches me when I’m not expecting it - I’m still that girl, Bass. Scratch me and I’m a stone-cold killer.”

He makes a noise in protest, but then waits, knowing she’s not quite finished.

“But I am yours, Bass. Been yours a long time. And maybe it’s not very Matheson of me, but – that won’t change. Ever.”

This time, her kiss is a demand that he recognize her pledge, and honor it. His lips are soft under hers at first, his tongue twining around her own in adoration, and – joy. She can taste his joy, Charlie gasps, and it’s so beautiful that she wants to linger there, kiss for hours, bask in it. But the tide is rising between them, licks turning to nips and then to bites as his hips start to buck underneath her, his bound cock leaking its frustration against her back. And she’s so full of him, of them, of hope, that it’s a mercy for them both when she moves.

Charlie shuffles backwards, groaning with the sensation as she drags her drenched sex over his poor, swollen cock, unable to keep from wriggling as she coats ribbon and cock alike with her arousal. His hips are thrashing underneath her, but she manages to fist him upright, then slide down with a guttural yell of pure triumph. 

She gasps at the pinch and pull of the ribbon as its surface scrapes along her inner walls, and tells herself maybe it’s one of those things that’s better in fantasy, the reality being a little bit more uncomfortable than she expected. She’s wondering if she should rethink the whole process when then the large knot at the base of his cock comes to rest against her clit. It’s a startling feeling and Charlie stills for a moment, then shoves her hips forward in the spirit of experimentation. Then again, the friction making her shudder and groan with delight.

Two breaths later, no fingers required, she tumbles over the edge, her over-sensitised clit threatening to explode as her pussy contracts around him. He starts to keen into her ear, begging her to release him, and this, this she knows, is where she is supposed to deny him. Make him wait longer. Torture him.

But she’s already reaching back onto the desk for her knife, and running it carefully under the length of ribbon that constricts the top of his cock. The loop around his balls falls away in seconds, the relief forcing Bass to bang his head back onto the chair as he fills the air with curses.

“Baby I’m gonna, you need to, oh FUCK …”

“Come inside me, Bass.”

“Are you –" yes, she is sure, she promises him with her mouth sealed over his. She couldn’t be more sure, the steady slam of her hips tells him. She is sure of so many things, her satisfied little purr tells him, after.

Neither of them want to move, the unity of their bodies too satisfying to abandon as a bone-deep languor wraps itself around them.

“Don’t forget to untie me,” Bass says sleepily and Charlie blinks, realizing how close she is to sinking into an orgasm-fuelled blackout. She whimpers as he slips out of her body, his exhausted, abused cock still bearing the marks of her ribbon. The sight of it still manages to stir a crazy pulse somewhere deep in her core, but she has no energy available to do anything about it.

Later, she promises herself, forcing her leg muscles cooperate as she shuffles backwards then pushes herself up onto her feet. She looks about for her knife – he doesn’t even lift his head, she notes with a smirk – then slices through his bonds as carefully as she can. Rubbing the feeling back into his muscles, feeling them tense and release under the attentions of her hands, helping him rotate his shoulders so that he can bring his arms forward once more, it feels, she feels …

“Oh! I forgot!” she says. “You need to say it. Aloud. What you wrote in your note. Preferably down on your knees.”

Bass grins at her position draped across his lap and simply raises his eyebrows when she refuses to move. 

“We’ll save on bended knee for another time. But I can say it, Charlie. Happily. Will you –“

“I didn’t meant that,” she smirks. “The first bit.”

“Oh,” he murmurs, and his gaze is so soft she wants to wrap herself in it like a coat. “That.” 

“I love you, Charlotte Matheson. In so many ways I’d need a week to explain. But I’ll take it if you let me – this week, next week, every damn week I have left, I’ll tell you how much I love you,” he says. “Please, m –“ 

She lays her fingers across his lips, trying to catch the words before they fall. “Nope. Heard everything I need. My turn now.” She thought she’d be scared, or crippled with doubt. She’s not.

“Will you marry me, Sebastian Monroe?”

Azure. Cerulean. Wet, shining blue, she marvels as he reaches for her, burying his face in her shoulder as he sings and kisses and sobs his promises into her hair, her skin, her mouth - her very soul, Charlie fancies. Vows made, they subside into silence. 

“Was that a yes?” she asks eventually, and he catches her hand to drop a reverent kiss on her ring finger. “No, little cat. That was a fuck, yes, let’s do this thing.”

“Oh, thank God,” Charlie moans, and twists around to find the little black box, still abandoned at one end of his desk. She flicks it open and grabs the ring inside, sliding it back onto her finger. 

“I really, really love this ring.”

_fin_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With thanks to bearyan (bea2me) who flailed so encouragingly when I asked for a lightning-fast beta. And to scifi_gk for her gorgeous art that I shall endeavour to upload as soon as I can.


End file.
